Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Connecticut’s Last Gasp

When the coroner bends over the body and pronounces
Connecticut officially dead, some people, among them the enlightened members of
the state’s dwindling editorial boards, will want to know the details: What
finally did the patient in, and could the mortally ill patient have been saved
had our political prescriptions been different?

The coroner’s likely verdict will be that Connecticut died
as lobsters do when they are put in a pot of cool, salted water, the heat being
gradually raised to the boiling point. At the beginning of the process, the
lobster thinks it has finally arrived home in Homer’s welcoming, wine-dark sea;
but, as the water grows hotter, its plight gradually begins to dawn upon it.
It’s cooked; there is no exit.

Some forensic
historian may point to May 2015 as the tipping point, the slide down the
slippery slope from which there is no return. In the middle of the merry month
of May,the Yankee Institute,
Connecticut’s premier conservative think tank, published a poll commissioned from
Data & Strategy that examined “the current state of public
opinion among likely general election voters in Connecticut around the issue of
the current budget proposals and the constitutional spending cap.”

The study
notes that “82% of voters agree with spending cap,” and “70% support the
current structure of the spending cap.” These percentages exceed even the study’s
data showing nutmeggers’ disdain for high taxes: “Neither raising taxes nor
increasing spending above the state cap is a good thing if you will be on the
ballot in 2016. 70% of voters are less likely to support lawmakers if they vote
to increase taxes. 73% of voters are less likely to support lawmakers if they
vote to increase spending above the constitutional cap.”

The study does not note how easily Connecticut’s General
Assembly, weeks before the study was published, compromised the constitutional
spending cap – through the expedient of moving previously capped funds outside
the strictures of both the statute and the constitutional provision, the
purpose of which was to control spending. This was beyond the purview of the study. It was as if the Democrat dominated
General Assembly were to define down the very meaning of the word crime and
then declare that crime in the state had been diminished through the progressive programs
of enlightened legislators. Wait for it.

The pool of controlled spending under the cap once included
pension payments – a huge block of money; Connecticut’s pension liability
was hovering around $44 billion, according to a story reported in 2011 by the New London Day,
which noted ominously, “It would cost each man, woman and child in the state
$12,157 to close the $44 billion funding gap afflicting the state's two largest
pension systems [for state workers and teachers] and its two retiree health benefit programs. Since the
mid-1990s, the state rarely has met its required contribution, although it did
so in 2013.”

Removing pensions from the cap allowed progressives in the
legislature, with the approval of Democratic leaders in both chambers, to raise
new revenue to meet the new ceiling created by the removal of pension payments.
And the Democrats desperately needed a new ceiling.

Why? Because Democratic Governor Dannel (“the Porcupine”)
Malloy had just sent to the Democratic dominated General Assembly a budget
proposal that included expenditures of $100 billion over 30 years to repair the
state’s crumbling transportation architecture that was supposed to have been
financed through a dedicated fund that drew money from the state’s
highest-in-the-nation gas taxes. Over the years, the “lockbox” containing the supposed
dedicated funds was rifled by spendthrift legislators who used the money mostly
to cover deficits created by a Democratic dominated legislature that could not
and would not reduce its level of spending.

Connecticut “lockboxes” are regularly raided by politicians,
dedicated funds are quickly undedicated, and spending caps are regularly doffed
by the legal eagles who lead legislators by the nose down primroses paths strewn
with promises of responsible and frugal spending. Neither the crooked spirit
nor the wayward flesh of Connecticut’s governors or legislators is willing to
cut spending. And, despite what many have heard from UConn economists, state
union workers and others whose careers in
and out of government depend upon a continual rise in the level of spending – it is spending, spending, spending that is
driving once rich Connecticut into a too early grave.

Ironically, the one person in the state who might pull the
lobster from the pot – by opening an entente with Republicans in the General
Assembly – is Mr. Malloy. He won’t do it.